Abstract

YING, Wei-Chiao. The Confucian Political Ethics and the Ideal of Tianxia: their Origin and their Evolution. CONfines relacion. internaci. ciencia política [online]. 2020, vol.16, n.30, pp.81-108.  Epub Jan 22, 2024. ISSN 1870-3569.  https://doi.org/10.46530/cf.vi30/cnfns.n30.p.81-108.

We can consider Confucianism as the foundation and the binding force of the Sinic civilization, which includes Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and China. Its tradition centers on secularism, which is to say, the priority of human order before taking divine order into account. Including Japan, the realm of the gods, regulated by Shinto, accepted the idea of Confucian political ethics, given that it recognized China as the representative of the center in Tianxia (all under heaven), practiced in their international historic system named the Chinese tributary system. In this paper, we discuss the origin and the evolution of Confucian political ethics and we argue that the Sinic civilization holds the concrete and firm belief -improvement of the collective life- as a doctrine that predominates the behaviors of the generations under its influence, till present day.

Keywords : Confucian ethics; Tianxia; historic international system; East Asia.

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